The functional properties of a cognate morpheme often vary between languages or dialects. The prefix me- in the Swahili dialects, derived from Proto-Sabaki *-mala ‘finish’ (Proto-Bantu *-màd-), is one such case. In this article, I discuss the functional differences and similarities of this prefix between Kimakunduchi, the dialect spoken in the southern part of Unguja, and Kiunguja, the prestigious dialect of Swahili originally spoken in Zanzibar Town and environs. Me- has been labelled both ‘perfect’ and ‘perfective’. I maintain, however, that the former should be assigned to Kimakunduchi me-, the latter to Kiunguja me-, based on the contexts in which they are used. This contrast not only sheds light on the difference in the TA (tense-aspect) system for anterior reference between the dialects, but also suggests that me- in the Swahili dialects has taken a diachronic path from perfect to perfective, a cross-linguistically observable tendency. The process of diachronic functional change can be shown more clearly with the me-cognate ma- in the Kitumbatu dialect spoken on Tumbatu island off the northwest tip of Unguja. Kitumbatu ma- occurs almost in the same contexts as Kimakunduchi me-, but differs in co-occurrence with hodiernal temporal adverbials, which supports the claim that the restriction on temporal closeness relaxes in parallel with the change from perfect to perfective.

Linguistic studies on the aspectual system of natural language have mainly focused on its semantics and morphology; the syntax of aspect has not yet received as much attention. In this dissertation, I provide a syntactic analysis of the aspectual system of Chinese. In analyzing the properties of situation aspect, I propose a unified syntactic structure that accounts for the two mechanisms of telicity marking in Chinese. First, I argue that like pre-verbs in Slavic languages, Chinese also has overt telic morphemes which are used to turn an atelic event into a telic one. For example, I claim that the morpheme wan 'to finish' is base-generated as the head of Inner Aspect Phrase in between vP and VP. This functional phrase is responsible for the telic reading of a sentence. I also claim that differently from languages such as English, whose telicity marking mainly depends on the quantity of the object, countability and boundedness of direct objects in Chinese are not directly responsible for telicity marking. Secondly, I demonstrate that the proposed analysis of telicity marking can also be used to account for the syntactic distributions of the resultative V-V compounds and V-de phrases. I argue that these two types of sentences also contain Inner Aspect Phrase that is responsible for the telic reading. I also claim that the difference in word order between these two constructions is due to morphological requirements and I illustrate how morphology may affect syntax in the derivation. Finally, I discuss imperfective viewpoint aspect in analyzing the distributions of the progressive zai and the durative -zhe. Starting from the close relation between locative expressions and progressive aspect cross-linguistically, I demonstrate that zai always functions as a preposition and is not itself the source of the progressive aspect. I also analyze the usages of -zhe and argue that like English present particle morpheme -ing, this imperfective particle also functions as a verbal suffix of two different types of imperfective aspect. It can be used to express progressive aspect as well as resultative imperfective aspect. The analysis provides a generalization of the imperfective viewpoint aspect in Chinese.

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An aspect of the Romance languages that defies neat linguistic analysis is tense usage. In particular, students of Romance languages as well as grammarians have found it difficult to provide a consistent explanation for the imperfect - preterite opposition. Two main points of contention concern (i) the question of whether the two forms have an inherent aspectual content and (ii) the structure and role of lexical aspectual information in determining the overall meaning of a sentence. While the attempts at explaining French and Spanish usages of the imperfect and the preterite are numerous, hardly any work has been done in the interpretation of Romanian data. Furthermore, a general assumption that the same form - function opposition holds across Romance languages has led to cross-linguistic differences rarely being examined. I argue that the imperfect and the preterite do have an inherent aspectual content. However, in opposition to previous accounts, I maintain that the preterite does not provide a ‘closed’ viewpoint and that an atelic eventuality described by the verb phrase in the preterite can continue up to the present moment. I propose a description of the imperfect - preterite opposition that includes finer distinctions of lexical aspect based on its constituent stage structure. These finer lexical aspectual distinctions allow the identification of an area of divergence in the use of the two forms in French, Spanish, and Romanian: the preterite was found to be used more widely with states in Romanian than in French and Spanish.

The aim of this thesis is to compare ways of expressing aspectuality in Norwegian and German. In the first, theoretical part, the attention is given to problems with the terminology and to differences in expressing aspect in Slavic and Germanic languages. In the following chapters, there are described various formal means of expressing aspect in Norwegian and German. In the practical part, I tried to find out how selected Norwegian aspectual constructions are translated into German. This analysis is based on a representative sample of literary texts. Key words: aspect, perfective, durative, telic and atelic verbs

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar a categoria do tempo interno ou aspecto verbal na organização narrativa do romance Vidas Secas, de Graciliano Ramos. Repassa-se criticamente, com base na leitura de algumas obras representativas, a contribuição tradicional ao estudo desse conceito, mesmo nos casos em que não é identificado pelo termo aspecto. Em seguida, foram abordados a conceituação da categoria do aspecto verbal e alguns conceitos sobre a semântica do perfectivo e do imperfectivo segundo estudos empreendidos por linguistas diversos. Abordou-se ainda a variedade de meios de expressão do aspecto: o lexical, o sintático, o derivacional e o flexional. No segundo momento, procedeu-se a uma análise da funcionalidade textual do aspecto como recurso de organização do texto narrativo. Para tanto, foram levados em conta os conceitos de gênero textual e de modo de organização do discurso. Estes comentários tiveram por objeto o primeiro e o nono capítulos do romance, respectivamente Mudança e Baleia / This research is aimed to investigate the role of the category of internal time - or verbal aspect in the narrative organization of the novel Vidas Secas, by Graciliano Ramos. Based on the reading of some representative works, it surveys the traditional concept study contribution, even in cases where it is not identified by the term aspect. Besides, it addressed the concept of verbal aspect category and some concepts about the perfective and imperfective semantics according to studies undertaken by many linguists. It also addressed a variety of expression means: the lexical , the syntactic, the derivational and inflectional aspects. In a second step, an analysis of the textual aspect of functionality as a resource for the organization of narrative text was proceeded. Other factors taken into account were the concepts of genre and mode of discourse organization . These comments had for object the first and ninth chapters of the novel, named Mudança and Baleia, respectively

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar a categoria do tempo interno ou aspecto verbal na organização narrativa do romance Vidas Secas, de Graciliano Ramos. Repassa-se criticamente, com base na leitura de algumas obras representativas, a contribuição tradicional ao estudo desse conceito, mesmo nos casos em que não é identificado pelo termo aspecto. Em seguida, foram abordados a conceituação da categoria do aspecto verbal e alguns conceitos sobre a semântica do perfectivo e do imperfectivo segundo estudos empreendidos por linguistas diversos. Abordou-se ainda a variedade de meios de expressão do aspecto: o lexical, o sintático, o derivacional e o flexional. No segundo momento, procedeu-se a uma análise da funcionalidade textual do aspecto como recurso de organização do texto narrativo. Para tanto, foram levados em conta os conceitos de gênero textual e de modo de organização do discurso. Estes comentários tiveram por objeto o primeiro e o nono capítulos do romance, respectivamente Mudança e Baleia / This research is aimed to investigate the role of the category of internal time - or verbal aspect in the narrative organization of the novel Vidas Secas, by Graciliano Ramos. Based on the reading of some representative works, it surveys the traditional concept study contribution, even in cases where it is not identified by the term aspect. Besides, it addressed the concept of verbal aspect category and some concepts about the perfective and imperfective semantics according to studies undertaken by many linguists. It also addressed a variety of expression means: the lexical , the syntactic, the derivational and inflectional aspects. In a second step, an analysis of the textual aspect of functionality as a resource for the organization of narrative text was proceeded. Other factors taken into account were the concepts of genre and mode of discourse organization . These comments had for object the first and ninth chapters of the novel, named Mudança and Baleia, respectively

This thesis examines the perfective marker dao in the Nanjiang dialect and traces such usage in history. The morpheme dao in the language variety can be used as perfective marker in a variety of constructions, whereas in the Early Modern Chinese period dao's perfective use was relatively limited: measure phrases are employed to modify either the main verb or the object of a transitive verb. By reflecting on semantic changes of dao taking place in Early Modern Chinese, we suggest that relativization is a key step in the development of dao as an aspectual marker, that is, V(erb) dao O(bject) may be a direct reanalysis of V dao (as a modifier) + Head Noun, different from what is assumed in the literature, the substitution/analogy hypothesis about how the object of a transitive verb is placed after the post-verbal particles like le.

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This dissertation contributes to an ongoing debate on the types of linguistic features which can be acquired in a second language by looking at the multiple learning challenges related to the ergative case system (the appearance of –ne with the subject) in Hindi-Urdu by classroom learners. Some hypotheses in second language research hold that interpretable features (features which contribute semantic information) can be acquired in a second language, whereas uninterpretable features (features which express grammatical information) cannot be easily acquired, if ever. Additionally, hypotheses in second language processing hold that the second language learners are able to process semantic information but not grammatical information. This dissertation investigates at the acquisition process of second language learners of Hindi-Urdu acquiring the uninterpretable ergative case. In Hindi-Urdu, the subject of a sentence appears with the ergative case marker –ne, when the verb is transitive and in the perfective aspect. In my dissertation, I test the validity of the aforementioned hypotheses and investigate the acquisition and acquisitional process of ergative case in L2 Hindi-Urdu by L1 English speakers by analyzing data collected by using an acceptability/grammaticality judgement task, a self-paced reading task and a production task from Hindi-Urdu learners and native speakers.